When Raquel and I got to South Africa, we had a grand plan of road tripping to various Southern African countries, as I wrote about in this post. However, when we arrived in South Africa, and started calculating the costs of this road trip, we had scaled back the trip to only heading to Swaziland and Mozambique.

The initial idea was to drive through Swaziland and spend a night there before heading to Maputo pick up my belongings, spend another night there and then heading to some of the beaches for a couple of days, but as always we would see how thing would pan out while on the road.

We left for the Swazi border early on in the day to as we knew we had a long six-hour drive ahead of and we were slightly in the dark about how long crossing the border would actually take considering we driving across.

Amazing drive

However long it did take us didn’t really matter as the drive to the border was absolutely stunning with the road initially cutting into lush green fields, then hills and then suddenly mountains. It was probably one of the more beautiful drives I’ve done in ages.

However, as we arrived at the South African side of the border, dark clouds gathered above and the skies opened up bring down a massive downpour while cross the border on both sides.

Swazi stamp

Crossing the border was actually a lot simpler than we thought and in no time we cruised through the border getting our passport stamps and moving on into Swaziland.

Once in Swaziland, the rain and weather forced our hand and we decided to head straight to where we were spending the night in Malkerns at Malandela’s Bed & Breakfast, recommended to us by another blogger, 2Summers.

Malandela’s by night

After our Satnav took us on an unexpected tour of the Swazi countryside (Note to self, always update maps before travelling!), we finally arrived at the bed & breakfast, tired from a long drive and hungry as it was already way past lunch-time.

Some dinner

We walked through the beautiful gardens to our room, which looked more like a large studio apartment with kitchen and large bathroom. We immediately fell in love with what we saw and made our way to the restaurant for a spot of lunch before heading back our room for a nap.

Cloudy but amazing night

When we got up just before dinner and made our way to restaurant again for more food (I know, there is more to travelling than eating!). A nice walk around the grounds of House followed our lovely dinner on Fire, checking out some of the beautiful sculptures produced in the region.

House on Fire

The next morning we had our breakfast, before heading to some of the stores in House of Fire and picking up some arts and crafts to bring home. House on Fire has a very Gaudi-esque feel to it and by day it become even more evident, but alas we needed to make our to Zimbabwe.

Just before we left, I connected to the internet to check our prices at hostels in Maputo and at Ponta Douro beaches and was left slightly in shock with the prices of them. It was practically hotel prices and we could definitely afford this.

We got into the car and decided to drive to Maputo and we would decide when we arrived whether we would stay on. We packed our things and got in the car and started another long drive to Maputo.

Driving into Mozambique

Once again crossing into Mozambique was not a big deal or time consuming and we were quickly on the road again towards Maputo. However as soon as we ‘set foot’ into Mozambique it started raining and didn’t stop until we reached the outskirts of Maputo.

Closing in on Maputo

As soon as we reached the Maputo I realized why everyone I knew loved Beira over Maputo as traffic was absolutely crazy. We quickly made our minds up and decided that staying in Mozambique during this weather (the forecast wasn’t looking good either) was not a good idea.

We picked up my belongings and (slowly) made our way out of Maputo (It took us almost two hours to get out) and headed to the South African border. Crossing the border was easy once again and once done, we made our way to Nelspruit to spend the night as it was already almost 11pm.

The next we drove back to my hometown and that my friends is how you don’t do a road trip to Mozambique.

**Practical Details**

Accomodation: Malandela’s Bed and Breakfast – Double room, with bathroom, kitchen and breakfast included R550 per person per night.